TRANSMISSION OF CULTURAL NORMS AND VALUES FOR NATION BUILDING THROUGH STORYTELLING

AN ANALYSIS OF ANAMBRA BROADCASTING SERVICE TELEVISION PROGRAMME, EGWUONWA

Abstract

Culture as the totality of a people’s (Africans) way of life is transmitted from generation to generation through the storytelling method. It was one of the major methods used by our forefathers to teach. Teaching is a transaction between the teacher and the learner. There are many methods of teaching. No matter the method adopted, it should be a give and take situation, where the teacher imparts his ideas to the learner and the learner receives such impartation, interprets and stores it for future use. Storytelling is a teaching method. Therefore, the need to expose the relevance of the storytelling method as an agent for the transmission of cultural norms and value necessitated this work. The work is an analysis of Anambra Broadcasting Service (ABS) Children’s Storytelling Television Programme: Egwuonwa. The research is hinged on the sociocultural theories of Barbara Rogoff and Albert Bandura. According to Rogoff, children are social beings who need to make sense of the world, so they develop through activities within their cultural situation. This means that what they learn, and how they learn it, depends on what is happening around them- that is, their culture. She acknowledges that early childhood setting is also a part of children’s culture. On the other hand, Bandura’s socio cultural theory stresses that learning occurs within a social context and that people learn from one another through observation, imitation, and modeling. The content analysis of the qualitative research methodology for the data collection and analysis. This will be achieved through the review and critical examination of three episodes of Egwuonwa, as well as a review of other related literature. The study concludes that children learn and retain subject matter when they are relaxed and are taught in a friendly and stress free environment which is the fulcrum of the storytelling method. The study recommends the need to vary the methods of teaching and further advocates for the use of informal methods of teaching like drama and storytelling by teachers for the overall wellbeing of students in the nursery and primary school.